Such things as she
bought on the spot were placed in her carriage. And happiest of all
omissions, she met no one she knew. The praise that Madame Barriere
lavished on Honora's figure was not flattery, because the Paris models
fitted her to perfection. A little after five she returned to her hotel,
to a Mathilde in a high state of suppressed excitement. And at six, the
appointed fateful hour, arrayed in a new street gown of dark green cloth,
she stood awaiting him.

He was no laggard. The bell on the church near by was still singing from
the last stroke when he knocked, flung open the door, and stood for a
moment staring at her. Not that she had been shabby when he had wished to
marry her at noon: no self-respecting woman is ever shabby; not that her
present costume had any of the elements of overdress; far from it. Being
a woman, she had her thrill of triumph at his exclamation. Diana had no
need, perhaps, of a French dressmaker, but it is an open question whether
she would have scorned them. Honora stood motionless, but her smile for
him was like the first quivering shaft of day. He opened a box, and with
a strange mixture of impetuosity and reverence came forward. And she saw
that he held in his hand a string of great, glistening pearls.

"They were my mother's," he said. "I have had them restrung--for you."

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried. She could find no words to express the tremor
within. And she stood passively, her eyes half closed, while he clasped
the string around the lace collar that pressed the slender column of her
neck and kissed her.

Even the humble beings who work in hotels are responsive to unusual
disturbances in the ether. At the Barnstable, a gala note prevailed: bell
boys, porters, clerk, and cashier, proud of their sudden wisdom, were
wreathed in smiles. A new automobile, in Chiltern's colours, with his
crest on the panel, was panting beside the curb.

"I meant to have had it this morning," he apologized as he handed her in,
"but it wasn't ready in time."

Honora heard him, and said something in reply. She tried in vain to rouse
herself from the lethargy into which she had fallen, to cast off the
spell. Up Fifth Avenue they sped, past meaningless houses, to the Park.
The crystal air of evening was suffused with the level evening light; and
as they wound in and out under the spreading trees she caught glimpses
across the shrubbery of the deepening blue of waters. Pools of mystery
were her eyes.

T